Friday, September 4, 2009

Corruption in China

Consider the feature story in today's NY Times Business Section titled "The Corruptibles" (in the print edition) (see here) for your long-weekend reading pile.

Among other interesting points, writer David Barboza notes that the "Chinese government has more than 1,200 laws, rules and directives against corruption" and that even with selective enforcement of these laws about "150,000 officials [are] being punished every year for bribery, corruption and other offenses."

The cost of such conduct? According to a cited report, approximately 3% of China's gross domestic product.

Query whether employees of state-owned or state controlled companies are considered government / public officials under any of these various laws, rules or directives applicable to such office holders (as opposed to say commercial bribery laws). If anyone has insight into this issue, please do share.